The normative structure of science, hermeneutics, and leisure experience

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Abstract

Since Thomas Kuhn's (1962) discussion of scientific revolutions, philosophers of
science have defined the appropriate unit of analysis for exploring a research tradition
as its macrostructure (Anderson, 1986). This macrostructure is composed of the
normative philosophical commitments that are accepted in a research tradition without
direct empirical support (Hudson and Ozanne, 1988). While a discussion concerning the
normative philosophy of scientific paradigms has been opened in leisure research, the
discipline has not yet explored models for making paradigmatic commitments explicit.
The primary goal of this dissertation is to illustrate how one such model can be applied
to wildland recreation research. Secondary goals are to introduce the normative
commitments of an interpretive paradigm (productive hermeneutics) and to outline a
hermeneutic research program for exploring leisure experience and relationship to
resource.
The core of the model of the macrostructure of science is Laudan's (1984)
Reticulated Model of Scientific Rationality. This model describes scientific paradigms
in terms of three interdependent sets of normative commitments: ontology (assumptions
about reality and human nature), epistemology (assumptions about the nature, methods,
and limits of knowledge), and axiology (the over-riding goals of a paradi~m). This model
can be used to evaluate the "internal consistency" of the various commitments adopted
by research programs and to match assumptions about the phenomena being studied to
appropriate paradigms.
The productive hermeneutic paradigm maintains that studying human action is
more similar to interpreting texts than to gaining empirical knowledge of objects in
nature. It is best described as a meaning-based model which: portrays humans as
actively engaged in the construction of meaning as opposed to sin1ply responding to
information that exists in the environment; focuses on idiosyncratic meaning rather than
generic personality variables (e.g., past experience); and views experience as an emergent
narrative rather than a predictable outcome. Its philosophical commitments are suited
for studying phenomena that are unstructured, highly contextual, unpredictable, and
characterized by meaning that changes across time and individuals (e.g., behavior linked
to expressive, spiritual, and symbolic issues).